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Tag Archives: Haren

In Haren botanical garden in the northern Netherlands, there are not just plants and birds.

There are two buildings for insects. I went to both on 21 April.

The honeybee building has many inhabited beehives in various styles and shapes. Though it was a rather cold and windy spring day, the bees were flying and bringing in nectar. Usually, 10 degrees centigrade is considered to be the minimum temperature for bees to become active outside their hive. It was about 11 degrees.

The other building is the insectarium, the insect house. A bit difficult to find, as there was no sign at the entrance.

After the entrance, there is a room with exhibits of dead insects. Many of them stick insects, which also predominate in the insectarium’s live collection. The biggest one is a Phobaeticus serratipes, which we will meet later here in a terrarium.

After another door, the building becomes a bit warmer (though not as hot yet as in the Victoria amazonica hothouse behind it). Here are scores of terrariums, housing insects, and also some of their spider and scorpion arthropod relatives.

This video is called African grasshoppers (Locusta migratoria) in terrarium.

This is a Phobaeticus serratipes video, about a still not fully grown animal.

Like other stick insect species, Phobaeticus serratipes eats only leaves. Here in Haren, the stick insects do no get leaves from their tropical homelands, which would be expensive, but from the Netherlands. They don’t seem to mind. Phobaeticus serratipes gets bramble and oak leaves here. The big number of young animals in the terrarium seems to indicate the food works.